|
|
DISASTER
& SOCIAL CRISIS RESEARCH NETWORK - NEWSLETTER 9 |
Intensification
of Complex Disaster Production by Vera Vratusa, Belgrade University
Simultaneously with the escalation of the global systemic economic crisis of
capital hyper-accumulation, the supranational financial and corporate capital
that economically dominates all international organizations including the
Organization of United Nations, and is militarily organized in NATO, keeps on
minimizing the devastating consequences of its production of complex disasters.
More dangerously, it actually intensifies state terrorist production and use of
weapons of mass destruction of human and material resources, as it hurries to
dismantle the last resistance to the colonization and violent imposition of
capitalist forms of social relations' organization.
On March 27 2002, UN Environment Program published the result of a new study of
six sites in Serbia outside Kosovo and Metohija and in Montenegro which had
been struck by munitions coated with a reprocessed the radioactive and toxic
depleted uranium (DU) during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The new
report is characterized by the same appeasing tone also present in UNEP's last
year's Report on just 11 out of 80 sites in Kosovo and Metohija struck by the
same steel and concrete piercing munitions, for which NATO belatedly supplied
maps. The 2002 UNEP report confirms existence of widely dispersed DU contamination,
including even airborne DU particles at two of the sites more than two years
after the bombing. Downplaying the present danger of the DU particles being
ingested or inhaled, the UNEP study group stresses that contamination is
low-level and hence does not present immediate radioactive or toxic risks for
the environment or human health. Writers of the report nevertheless expressed
their concern over the potential for future contamination as the ammunition
tips made out of DU corrode, dissolve and infiltrate into the groundwater. The
penetrators recovered by the UNEP team had decreased in mass already by 10-15%.
UNEP researchers recommended therefore that the authorities take precautionary
measures, like the monitoring of the water quality. They also warned that
decontamination and construction work activities could stir up ceramic DU
aerosol dust from the ground surface and re-suspend it in air (UNEP report,
2002).
The limitation of such warnings is illustrated best by the success of the
lobbying of the Washington-led, war-industrial complex so far to prevent the
UN-backed in-depth study of the negative human health and environment impact of
the DU munitions, first massively used in Iraq. The U.S.-dominated financial
oligarchy is interested in the minimization of the damaging consequences of DU
use in warfare to be able to continue with the cheap disposal of nuclear waste
instead of expensive safe permanent storage and to avoid criminal charges and
payment of tens of billions of dollars for decontamination, health care,
compensations and reparations.
Instead of immediate implementation of the clean up, treatment, monitoring and
the necessary legislative work prosecuting the previous and forbidding the
future use of DU, the US-led NATO leadership keeps on using DU and other heavy
metal radioactive and toxic munitions in Afghanistan. It thus creates a serious
risk of radiation poisoning to thousands of people in the entire region
bordering Pakistan (Ridgeway, James, 2002).
The recent earthquake in this war-torn country reposes the question whether
there existed any connection between the US aviation massive dropping of the
bombs several times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and the
"natural" disaster that followed. Such questions were also raised
earlier when the heavy bombing of Yugoslavia was followed by a series of
earthquakes from Serbia to Turkey. Interviewed geophysicists asserted that some
bombs were known to provoke landslides (INTER/TASS Report, 2002).
The most perilous intensification of the war complex disaster production is
contained in the plans of the US military-industrial establishment, which are
already being turned into practice, to step up work on the development of
low-yield "mini-nuke" thermobaric bunker -busting bombs (Alcorn, Gay,
2002). This radicalization of the US military strategy is justified by the need
for bombs able to penetrate hundreds of meters underground, allegedly to
pre-emptively blow up stores of weapons of mass destruction in states
considered as constituting the "axis of evil" by the US
administration.
Such justification for the
violation of the disarmament agreements, moratorium on nuclear testing and
nonproliferation treaty, was institutionalized in the aftermath of the
September 11, 2001 explosions in the World Trade Center and Pentagon. These
explosions were according to the official US administration version blamed
exclusively on Muslim terrorists. The increasing number of reports question
this version, pointing out to the existence within the US of social groups that
were interested in increased military spending and the acquisition of control
over the mineral wealth in the Middle East and Caspian region by all means
deemed necessary, long before September 11. The review of the first reports
questioning the official interpretation of the September 11 explosions (Vratusa
Vera, 2001) would now have to be much longer. The new evidence accumulated on
the possible remote-control crashjacking of a small jet, not a Boeing 757, into
the Naval intelligence section of the Pentagon (The Power Hour, 2002), as well
as the lists of incriminating evidence destroyed and investigators killed in
the 11 September 2000 bomb explosion on the 23rd floor of the North World Trade
Center Tower concerning illegal oil swaps and gold-price-fixing involving heads
of leading oil companies and big banking houses (World Trade Center Crimes,
2002).
The financial oligarchy led
by the present US administration sticks to its "war on terrorism" justification
story, even though increasing number of people realize that allegations about
"new Hitlers" are unsubstantiated to say the least (Taylor, Scott,
2002). Such distorting accusations serve to conceal the main social sources and
the greatest perpetrators of state terrorism.
The ideological
representatives of the United Kingdom faction of supranational capital more
openly advocate the return of colonial order and the use of a pre-emptive
nuclear attack as an adequate foreign policy tool against the allegedly
destabilizing "pre-modern" and "rogue" states (Rashmee Z.
Ahmad, 2002; Fraser, Nelson, 2002).
After violating the UN
Charter and committing the greatest crime against peace, the US-led NATO keeps
on breaking international rules on the use of weaponry, since the calamitous
effects of nuclear weapons go beyond the battlefield and last long after the
conflict, causing prolonged suffering of civilians and durably damaging the
environment. The officials of the Hague Tribunal, paid by the military-industrial
establishments of the NATO member states allegedly to prosecute war crimes
committed on the territory of former Yugoslavia, refused even to consider the
legality under international criminal law of the NATO war of aggression and
bombing, By this ruling the Hague tribunal legalized the right of western
(neo)imperial powers to interfere in the internal affairs of smaller sovereign
nations which resist their domination, and generally gave them "the
license to kill" (Laughland, John, 2002).
The Israeli Sharon
government was quick to make the full use of this implicit license massacring
Palestinian people and occupying their land, within the context of the Bush
administration's production of the Orwellian permanent state terrorist war
against terrorist reactions that it breeds. Promotion of the "mini"
nuclear bombs into weapons of the first resort by US government extremely
increases the danger of the terminal nuclear war complex disaster.
References:
Alcorn, Gay, 2002: "US
plans bunker-busting 'mini-nuke'", http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/03/19/101651989236.html
Fraser, Nelson, 2002:
"Hoon rattles nuclear sabre", http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=30923200
INTER/TASS Report, 2002:
"US Air Strikes May Have Caused Afghan Quake", http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=2936402
Laughland, John, 2002:
"This is not Justice", http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,651187,00.html
The Power Hour, 2002: http://www.thepowerhour.com/pentgallery/FrameSet.htm
Rashmee Z.Ahmad, 2002:
"Blair's Britain Wants a Return to 'Age of Empire'", http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=5191650
Ridgeway, James, 2002:
"Radioactive Bombs Rain Down on Asia", http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0212/ridgeway.php
Taylor, Scott, 2002:
"Saddam Hussein is no Adolf Hitler", http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2002/04/01/f142.raw.html
UNEP report, 2002: http://postconflict.unep.ch/press/270302.html
Vratusa Vera, 2002:
"Complex Disaster Production - The Case of the Depleted-Uranium Bombing of
Afghanistan",
World Trade Center 2rimes,
2002: http://angelfire.com/ny5/tradecencrimes/, http://apfn.org/apfn/wtc.htm
and http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/cooper.htm